


dye them incarnadine

by waterlit



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Angst, Tragedy, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-08-30 17:39:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8542618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterlit/pseuds/waterlit
Summary: Death is hardly the greatest tragedy: five unsung women. Lenalee, Anita, Lulubell, Chomesuke and Fou.





	

I. [Chomesuke]

She will not last past the moon's reign. By the time the grey dawn creeps up the sky, she would long have vanished into dreary dust and dark matter best forgotten. Then again, she's never liked grey dawns, and so there is little need for her to rally round the scarce pool of hope and hope for salvation.

(Because salvation is a dream that lurks with forked-tongue and flashing lashes at the end of hope.)

The air smells like rain, and she drinks deep of it with arms twisted around each other, hoping that the Level Threes won't discover their hiding spot among battered tiles and falling doors. She has never liked the spring rain too.

Oh, the spring rains were cold at her death, falling with merry music upon the mounds of earth that kept her warm. She would scarce have opportunity to leave the hallowed place, but for the faltering cry that pulled her back from her long rest amidst the good and the glad.

_April is the cruellest month._

Then he came, he of the flaming red hair, like a breeze in the dark dusk, and he relieved her of the gnawing bloodlust. For a time.

She knows she cannot expect pity, for creatures such as she are wont to die without mercy extended to them.

But for now, she can laugh at the curling breath of the hapless cold rain and rue the day her sister mourned for her. And perhaps, blaspheme the god who condones the sin-sedged formation ( _same old, same old_ ) of the living dead, before she meets her long-awaited end in the darkness of paradise lost.

* * *

II. [Anita]

She hangs on the gallows, swinging to and fro, and knows that her slim hands cannot dither on the wavering pendulum much longer.

Here comes the age of dilemmas.

_To be or not to be, that is the question—_

But perhaps it is more a question of who she wants to be. The dutiful loving daughter, with hands upon the urn that hold her sweet mother's ashes, or the loving, faithful lover, sighing and languishing in curtained rooms while awaiting her lord's return.

The clouds seldom gather in this relentless summer, and the bright sunny places make her sad. Seldom does she wander from her bright house except in the gentle evening, accompanying her girls sometimes to browse the night bazaars. He whom she loves is far from this beautiful land, and she cannot look upon the sun-drizzled meres and light-dappled leaves without feeling her world shatter yet again.

The clock ticks on, and she wonders, draping feathered gauze over lamps. _When will it all end?_

And _, how can I help him?_

* * *

III. [Lenalee]

She is and isn't happy, all at once.

The months fly by on the wings of the wind, and she watches the petals fall in the bosom of lonely autumn. The skies are a dark velvet at night, the moon lost in byzantine mazes, snared in the spells of the great necromancer, and the trees seldom speak but sigh all day. Allen retreats further and further into his shell and consorts with the Fourteenth's memory while Link glowers by his side.

Kanda is deadly quiet and even Lavi fades into the walls. Lenalee combs through the snarls of her worries each and every night, and wonders if the Order will soon fall to the dreadful darkness.

When winter drapes itself over the quiet lands, it's all she can do to prevent herself from flying from the cage and attacking stray Akuma with reckless fury. But she doesn't, for she knows her danger, knows how hard it is on Komui every time he has to plan the roster, how his shoulders knot and how he can't sleep, how he murmurs strange names under his breath when he thinks no one's listening.

She hasn't the power needed to send her down the path of destruction, that much she knows. She is glad for it, thankful that she might still have a future if the war ends in her lifetime, that she will not be the sacrificial lamb upon which the Order has built its dogma, that Komui will not have to order her to fulfil her fate and slay the Earl. And yet—she looks at Dark Boots sometimes, the leather tight around her ankles, cool metal pressing against her heels and toes, and thinks of how fragile her power is, and how her Innocence can't save her the way Allen's saved him.

_Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry—_

The hurts she has seen press themselves across her heart like needle-points, and she prays for redemption for her sins. For to tarry amid the chaos is a sin in her heart, and she wishes that she isn't who she is and that she is who she isn't, all at once.

* * *

IV. [Lulu Bell]

She frightens the other children with tales of dark forests and animals with gleaming eyes which can take the shape of men.

Years later, a grown woman, strange dreams come quick and clear in the night. When her father hears about them, he locks her up at home. He's an elder of the local church, and doesn't condone her odd speeches and her insistence on hanging iron above the door.

 _Heresy_ , he says. _Witchcraft. I cannot have an apostate daughter._

One day a plague visits the town; a hundred lie dead in their beds by the end of the third day, sheets sodden with blood and sputum. Doctors flee, and the devout gather in the town square to chant with the priests.

Lulu Bell sits in her dark room, back straight and carriage proud, until her father returns and straps her across her legs. The townsfolk are on the hunt for witches he says, and warns her to stay out of trouble. For good measure, he slits the neck of her black cat and buries the carcass in their garden under shovels of pebbles and soil.

She sinks into a fever, burning with the plague, her body a furnace. Her mind fares no better, for the Noah memories find purchase in her soul and rake their claws through her thoughts. When the fever finally subsides, she sits up and presses a hand against her forehead. Her fingers are streaked with blood and when she looks into the mirror she finds crosses etched into her once-smooth forehead.

 _Devil_ , her father says, when he sees her again. He throws a bottle of holy water at her, but she's too strong now. She thinks of her dead cat and finds that she has claws where once she had fingernails.

So she raises her hand and slashes her father. Then she slinks her way out of her hidden abode into the forest of shadows—

To dwell in long sorrow.

For this is where (and how) the sinners go.

—and so the Earl finds her in the dark ravines beneath towering, encircling mountains. She's broken then, a skeletal waif, eyes wild and hair unkempt. But the Earl washes the blood from her fingers and knots the shadows out of her skin. Back to the Noah mansion they go.

Years later, she is strong and quick, the shape-shifter out of a shadowy tale. And now she knows, she was born to paint misdeeds.

* * *

V. [Fou]

_What passing bells for those who die as cattle?_

_What made me pick Walker back?_ She wonders time and again, as she sifts through her thoughts and burnishes memory in the darkness before dawn. The silence creeps up on her, and she feels a tinge of annoyance snake itself into her eyes.

Hers is a lonely lot for the most part; a thankless job, ignored, avoided, forgotten—utterly, desperately so. Who shall know the horrors of the dark creatures that lurk beneath the castle walls, who shall feel the heating pulse in lifeless veins that tremble at the slightest approach, who shall experience the surge of power at the expectation of frivolous battle, but she who has walked upon the long and perilous road?

_The shadows, the shadows—_

Sometimes, she thinks that it might be a blessing to be anything but human. For a curse is laid on all who walk under the sun with the legs of Man, and the Earl sweeps his decaying breath over all the putrid lands and sad wastes. Who will mourn the living when they die, who, who, unless it be her?

**Author's Note:**

> First posted on FFN in Jun 2010. It's been a long time, and it's somewhat over-wrought and self-indulgent, but this is still one of my favourites. Rewritten re Lenalee and Lulu Bell. 
> 
> The bits of poetry were taken from Eliot's The Waste Land, Shakespeare, Wilfred Owen's Anthem For Doomed Youth and Elizabeth Bishop's The Armadillo.


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